Hugh Gaitskell

Hugh Gaitskell (9 April 1906-18 January 1963) was Leader of the Labor Party from 14 December 1955 to 18 January 1963, succeeding Clement Attlee and preceding Harold Wilson; he concurrently served as Leader of the Opposition.

Biography
Hugh Gaitskell was born in London, England in 1906, and he was educated at Winchester and Oxford. He worked in adult education before becoming a lecturer in economics at University College, London in 1928. Gaitskell was a civil servant during World War II, serving in the Ministry of Economic Welfare. He was elected to Parliament for the Labor Party for the constituency of Leeds South in 1945. He was Minister of Fuel and Power from 1947 to 1950 and Chancellor of the Exchequer from 1950 to 1951, imposing the prescription charges covering half the cost of adult spectacles and dentures which he felt necessary in order to pay for rearmament; he was opposed by Aneurin Bevan, who resigned from the Cabinet. He was by this time the most prominent figure on the right of the Labor Party, and when he succeeded Clement Attlee as party leader in 1955, he soon confronted the left-wing "Bevanites" by opposing unilateral nuclear disarmament (1960-61) and by unsuccessfully seeking to revise the Labor Party constitution's Clause IV (which committed the party to nationalization) at the party's 1959 conference. Although of undoubted intellect and ability, he never managed to reconcile fully the left wing of the party to his leadership, which condemned to failure his campaigning in the 1959 elections and his subsequent attempts at party reform. He died in office in 1963, and Harold Wilson succeeded him as party leader.